Pre-production Blues

I don’t have time for a very long blog post this week, but I always try to post every week and even though I’m about as production-depressed as I ever get right now, it’s time for a post.

This is just such a hard thing to do, you guys. Finding 10 evenings in November when everybody’s free to shoot is practically impossible. The thing that sucks too is that now that we raised all this money, we can’t just quit. We’re going into our 3rd major reschedule, and people who have previously agreed to be available on shoot days have new things popping up in their schedules. Some things are unavoidable. Really great opportunities and paying gigs. Some people just want to suddenly go out of town. Scheduling independent productions is a constant stomach-acid-churning, panic-inducing nightmare that sucks all of the fun out of what’s supposed to be a creative process. It’s not about discovering a story or crafting characters anymore. It’s only about trying to cram it into as short a time as possible around people’s busy lives. That’s all it is now. And I can’t wait for it to be over.

Production will just take a few months of headaches, heartaches, compromise, and misery and then I’ll have a nice little post-production reprieve to rediscover my optimism and enjoyment in the story we’re telling.

I try never to unleash the sometimes-paralyzing negativity and anxiety of this “hobby” in the video updates, but sometimes I unspool it here for the dedicated few who read the blog so my wife doesn’t have to bear the sole brunt of it by herself.

Thanks for reading; ‘cause I have neither the income, time, or interest to invest in therapy.

I’m sorry things are so difficult right now. I know it’s really stressful trying to schedule stuff, because people always see it as something that *can* be rescheduled, rather than being set in stone, so it often ends up being a runner up on people’s to do lists…
I really wish that you didn’t have to suffer so much in order to provide something which is pure joy for the end viewer… feels wonky that *I* don’t have suffer at all and yet I get so much out of your efforts…
Anyway, I hope things improve, hold in there, keep on trucking etc. I look forward to you reaching the time where you can enjoy the process again. Best wishes.

Just the very act of venting in that post made me feel a ton better. Two things were the issue. Keeping it all bottled up, and seeing too much of the big picture all at once. Scheduling is always intimidating because episodes feel so huge when you look at them all at once. Dealing with them a shoot day at a time is a doable thing. Seeing everything laid out in front of you at once starts to look impossible. Now that we’re underway, things are looking up.